Please post any feedback you may have on the ideas posted in the EGS forums (viewforum.php?f=5) in this thread. We will consider any and all feedback. If you wish to take part in this project and have great ideas this is the place to start, as we will promote anyone who posts interesting stuff here and allow you to contribute directly to the discussion in the main forum.

On the other hand, please do not use this thread to discuss the test server.

As far as the racial balance is considered, nothing is set in stone, correct?In the thread there's two options listed.You can always try one option and then switch to another to see which one seems to fit more. At least, that's how I see it best handled as a sort of beta test.It's still a ways off from implementing I'm sure, but I figured I should get my thoughts across while I'm still thinking of them.

For racial balance: I feel that their should be differences between stats just far less than there is now, it leads to the problem that pretty much makes humans useless late in-game when compared to CASTS, Force and Beasts. Don't get me wrong, differences are great in the game and humans are meant to be the class that can be anything but the problem is that they are excelled by any other race making them pretty much useless.

Of course I'm not the expert in this but I feel like stats in PSU are rather imbalanced, especially experience which needs drastic fixes over level 100. I'd just love to play on a server where everyone's focus on leveling is not doing events or the same mission constantly over again as this honestly killed the game for me. Did you guys enjoy doing White Beast all of the time? I sure didn't.

I remember someone on the old forum ported over PSP1's revised stats to PSU:AOTI, would it be worth doing a project like that for PSP2/i or not?

Not sure I like the idea of giving each race some sort of non-class based advantage like faster attack speed or additional targets. Sounds good on paper but what do you do when you end up playing catch-up to feedback all the time in an effort to balance these not-easily quantifiable abilities? It could be a real headache, despite how cool it sounds. A period of beta testing for this would definitely be necessary.

I'd just love to play on a server where everyone's focus on leveling is not doing events or the same mission constantly over again as this honestly killed the game for me. Did you guys enjoy doing White Beast all of the time? I sure didn't.

PSU's problem is that events are so godly it's hardly worth playing when one isn't on. They give the best EXP overall (Stars Camp is arguably better, but is only once a day unless you stack up across multiple players). They have great drops and rewards, some remaining exclusive to the event in question and are thus not available afterwards at all (see: the Urban Defense rewards, which can't even be traded). They are often where new difficulties and level tiers make their debut, remaining exclusive to events for some time until Sega finally start releasing the new difficulty in free mission format - case in point, currently S4 difficulty with the 190-199 enemy tier is exclusive to events. Want your uber unit, Siren Glass Hammer or Eternal Psychodrive? Better hope you get that drop in event S4, or are rich enough to buy it, or you're going to be waiting a while before it drops again. This is particularly galling as this tier has several desirable enemy drops, unlike 150-174 which is probably the single worst level tier for drops in the game for how high a level it is.

Is it any wonder people do nothing but events? They are totally game-breaking to a ridiculous degree and badly need to be toned down (or at least have the rest of the game be toned up to match). White Beast syndrome is an arguably trickier issue to solve, as while White Beast had a ridiculous effort to reward ratio, western players simply could not be arsed to leave their hotspot compared to their Japanese counterparts (example: Seed Express was a much bigger hotspot in Japan than it was on international servers). The missions do need to be properly balanced though.

Mewn wrote:Not sure I like the idea of giving each race some sort of non-class based advantage like faster attack speed or additional targets. Sounds good on paper but what do you do when you end up playing catch-up to feedback all the time in an effort to balance these not-easily quantifiable abilities? It could be a real headache, despite how cool it sounds. A period of beta testing for this would definitely be necessary.

I'm fine with having balance suffer a bit in favor of more diversity. Adding "interesting" things always makes it suffer, anyway:Adding type customizations for weapons means that instead of balancing 5 classes (which, in itself, is going to lead to issues; one AT will be way more valuable than any other class, but the second will be worthless), you have to deal with 5 classes each of which can raise 26 different weapons (how do grenades synergize with Ra- techs? will a class with axe and rifle be more useful than one with longbow and rifle?).Like themed areas with contaminated enemies? Bit of a shame lightning ones are hilariously anti-melee! That's okay, though, ground areas are totally anti-force, so it balances out... ha ha, no, not even close.Bosses? Half are horribly anti-melee, half are horribly anti-range. Most are horribly anti-force (that single hitbox per attack thing is a real killer, and even if you remove that, not being able to aim at range breaks it all).Diversity in monster spawns? I'm sure you could probably balance it, but it'll be a challenge. Larger groups favor laser+linear tech play, smaller groups (and larger multi-target monsters) favor hunters and shotguns to an inordinate degree.

Even simply changing the map but leaving all the monsters the same will unbalance it slightly. Take the same monsters from Raffon Meadow to Rozenom, and all of a sudden regardless of how well balanced it was, ranger weapons (and to a lesser extent slicers) will suddenly be way better.

I kinda went off on a tangent there, but my point still stands. We aren't going to get the game perfectly balanced, the problem's when the decrease in "balance" doesn't add to an increase in "interesting," which is a huge issue in PSU. Playing a cast didn't let you play differently from a newman, it just made you stronger if you were certain types. Having "Mad Creatures" and "Plains Overlord" didn't add diversity, it just added an extra two blocks (indistinguishable from the Plains Overlord ones!) for anyone who wanted to fight a dragon. Having three weapon/armor manufacturers created noticeable stat differences in exchange for... minor aesthetic tweaks? Master classes, did pretty much exactly the same thing as forte classes, but better! Garbage, all around.

EDIT: Actually, on a related note, the more homogeneous the game is, the more important relatively minor flaws will become. Looking at PSU, for instance, the difference between playing a male character and a female one on the same race is pretty much utterly insurmountable purely because neither brings anything to the table (inb4 boobs) besides their stats. If you're playing a class that uses ATP to attack, a male character will be superior, and vice versa if you're playing a magic class.

Agrajag wrote:Even simply changing the map but leaving all the monsters the same will unbalance it slightly. Take the same monsters from Raffon Meadow to Rozenom, and all of a sudden regardless of how well balanced it was, ranger weapons (and to a lesser extent slicers) will suddenly be way better.

I kinda went off on a tangent there, but my point still stands. We aren't going to get the game perfectly balanced, the problem's when the decrease in "balance" doesn't add to an increase in "interesting," which is a huge issue in PSU. Playing a cast didn't let you play differently from a newman, it just made you stronger if you were certain types. Having "Mad Creatures" and "Plains Overlord" didn't add diversity, it just added an extra two blocks (indistinguishable from the Plains Overlord ones!) for anyone who wanted to fight a dragon. Having three weapon/armor manufacturers created noticeable stat differences in exchange for... minor aesthetic tweaks? Master classes, did pretty much exactly the same thing as forte classes, but better! Garbage, all around.

I'll agree that they are many aspects to look at for when it comes to racial balancing but what you are looking at are more different matters that shouldn't be factored in at this point. The premise of racial balancing discusses the attributes of the races, not how monsters/bosses or the type of map will affect them. Types will most likely play a role in the racial balancing.

Agrajag wrote:Even simply changing the map but leaving all the monsters the same will unbalance it slightly. Take the same monsters from Raffon Meadow to Rozenom, and all of a sudden regardless of how well balanced it was, ranger weapons (and to a lesser extent slicers) will suddenly be way better.

I kinda went off on a tangent there, but my point still stands. We aren't going to get the game perfectly balanced, the problem's when the decrease in "balance" doesn't add to an increase in "interesting," which is a huge issue in PSU. Playing a cast didn't let you play differently from a newman, it just made you stronger if you were certain types. Having "Mad Creatures" and "Plains Overlord" didn't add diversity, it just added an extra two blocks (indistinguishable from the Plains Overlord ones!) for anyone who wanted to fight a dragon. Having three weapon/armor manufacturers created noticeable stat differences in exchange for... minor aesthetic tweaks? Master classes, did pretty much exactly the same thing as forte classes, but better! Garbage, all around.

I'll agree that they are many aspects to look at for when it comes to racial balancing but what you are looking at are more different matters that shouldn't be factored in at this point. The premise of racial balancing discusses the attributes of the races, not how monsters/bosses or the type of map will affect them. Types will most likely play a role in the racial balancing.

IMO, the idea of racial balance is nice because for example, with very high ATA in nearly all classes, being hunters they can overcome humans and newmans, but not beasts (Exceptin fo clases and his low MST and TP...). However, previous posts are right. We don't know if this changes are good for gamepley or no. I think that we must do other trial server for testing the ideas.

I was a Nyuzero's beta tester and one of group's idea of the dev was... making an original server, and then, other server for testing the ideas.

LightDark wrote:I'll agree that they are many aspects to look at for when it comes to racial balancing but what you are looking at are more different matters that shouldn't be factored in at this point. The premise of racial balancing discusses the attributes of the races, not how monsters/bosses or the type of map will affect them. Types will most likely play a role in the racial balancing.

Racial balance (in any way other than "every race is identical besides their ears") depends very much on how missions are designed! If nanoblasts are kept at all, their balance compared to SUVs are immediately affected by mission design; if a mission has a small number of waves with many enemies in each, SUVs will have a huge advantage, while many smaller waves will be better for nanoblasts (because a large amount of the potential SUV damage output will be wasted on empty space).

Of course, if nanoblasts stay weaker than normal attacks, the point's moot anyway, but... I'd hope we know better than to repeat that mistake.

And no, don't worry, I'm very much not suggesting "we'll theory up an approach and push it onto the server FOR ALL TIME", that'd be ridiculous. Getting anything resembling balance (outside "everyone is a hunter with a level 1 GRM saber, and the only mission is Unsafe Passage") is going to be an ongoing process.

Hominghead wrote:Hmm, i like to play Cast, but i don't like it to be a Ranger.

:l

However racial balance ends up, we should be looking to avoid pigeon-holing X race into Y class so that shouldn't be a problem. It was always dumb how the game offers the chance to change classes but then has the racial balance it does...

Casts are competitive at anything not called Fortetecher or Masterforce though.